Sages Bharadwaja

Written in about 600 B.C., a Sanskrit medical treatise by Atreya and Susruta provides the earliest record of the practice of medicine in the world. According to Indian tradition, medicine was the gift from the god Indra to Sages Bharadwaja, the patron saint of medicine. The practice of surgery was a separate gift by the same god to Dhanvantari, the patron saint of surgery. Bharadwaja and Dhanvantari then passed their knowledge to Atreya and Susruta.

This Indian tradition estimates that Atreya and Susruta practiced medicine nearly 150 years before Hippocrates.